Experience jumping from Xerox to Ricoh (or other)?

[kslight]

For a variety of reasons, after 25+ years as a Xerox only company we are pretty fed up and heavily considering replacing 2 Xerox 6180s and 2 J75s with some configuration of production level Ricoh devices (8220 black, 7100 color?). Normally we do 600k up to 1.2million black 11x17 per month, 70k+ 11x17/12x18/13x19 color.

Not looking for a lot of equipment advice, more broader scope..Really just asking if anyone has jumped ship and had positive/negative experiences. Our biggest problems have little to do with print quality, more to do with the service side of things (Xerox outsourcing us to where we have no domestic contacts anymore, terrible service response time, etc) and uptime, which Xerox does not appear to be in any hurry to fix with our local team (not in a tiny market).

Of course the other production printer dealers paint a pretty rosy picture in comparison (and supposedly have been sweeping through all of our competitors that are also done with Xerox), but to remain on the side of caution, we can't always believe every word out of their mouth. On paper the competitors seem to be willing to bend over backwards for our business, whereas we haven't been able to squeeze proposals out of Xerox despite nearly 11 months of trying! That's even giving them the benefit of the doubt that they could somehow turn around all the service concerns we have.

 

[Shawnd]

Jumped from Xerox to Ricoh a couple years ago when the 7100 came out, the thing you really need to find out is how is the Ricoh service in your area? How many techs trained on the equipment? Response times? I had the service manager come in and interviewed him before switching.

Xerox service and sales in our area really tanked as well though the local dealer, we work with Ricoh direct now, no dealer in the middle.

So far it is going good with Ricoh, the box that prints is only half the equation.

 

[wonderings]

Service is going to vary area to area. I would be trying to find other printers who have similar machines to what you are looking for and ask them their honest opinion about the service they have been receiving from Ricoh or any of the other big guys. I know for us Xerox service has been fantastic and one of the reasons we have stuck with them as that is worth a lot to us.

 

[tpmar]

For a variety of reasons, after 25+ years as a Xerox only company we are pretty fed up and heavily considering replacing 2 Xerox 6180s and 2 J75s with some configuration of production level Ricoh devices (8220 black, 7100 color?). Normally we do 600k up to 1.2million black 11x17 per month, 70k+ 11x17/12x18/13x19 color.

Not looking for a lot of equipment advice, more broader scope..Really just asking if anyone has jumped ship and had positive/negative experiences. Our biggest problems have little to do with print quality, more to do with the service side of things (Xerox outsourcing us to where we have no domestic contacts anymore, terrible service response time, etc) and uptime, which Xerox does not appear to be in any hurry to fix with our local team (not in a tiny market).

Of course the other production printer dealers paint a pretty rosy picture in comparison (and supposedly have been sweeping through all of our competitors that are also done with Xerox), but to remain on the side of caution, we can't always believe every word out of their mouth. On paper the competitors seem to be willing to bend over backwards for our business, whereas we haven't been able to squeeze proposals out of Xerox despite nearly 11 months of trying! That's even giving them the benefit of the doubt that they could somehow turn around all the service concerns we have.

Hey ksherrod: Spent 10 years with series 2 Indigos. I've been running my Ricoh ProC9100 for almost a year now. With Indigo it was nearly impossible to get a tech to make the 4 1/2 hour drive to my site, spare parts were unheard of. The phone support was pretty good, and with almost no tech support I got to be pretty good at working on it, kind of the sink or swim kind of thing. This despite the huge monthly $$$$ for the service agreement. If, after much time with the tier 1 phone guys we figured I had to replace a circuit board, the soonest you could get it was 10:30 AM the next day. And here is the worst part. There was about a 50% chance the board they sent you would work, or maybe it would have some other defect.
Now Ricoh: In my area, which is not a very "urban" area. The tech service is fantastic! Been almost a year and it's still unbelievable to me how great it is. And talk about spare parts, I have at least 1 and in many cases 2 of the TCRU (trained customer replaceable units) on hand. I really can't imagine how my Ricoh customer service could be any better. At one point with Indigo I went a little over 2 years without a tech onsite. I think the longest I've gone without seeing my Ricoh tech is about 2 weeks. As I replace these TCRU parts, he stops by and rebuilds the ones I took out so I'm ready to go again.
But like others have mentioned, you should definitely research what the service is like in your specific area.

 

[kslight]

Jumped from Xerox to Ricoh a couple years ago when the 7100 came out, the thing you really need to find out is how is the Ricoh service in your area? How many techs trained on the equipment? Response times? I had the service manager come in and interviewed him before switching.

Xerox service and sales in our area really tanked as well though the local dealer, we work with Ricoh direct now, no dealer in the middle.

So far it is going good with Ricoh, the box that prints is only half the equation.

That's not a bad idea, I should have the service manager come in here.

It is a Ricoh dealer we are speaking with, not direct. But I know them not to be a small dealer, they are a company that's spread all over the country, and I see their service vans all the time. I personally know one of their techs (but he doesn't service this equipment).

Yeah we tend to not be one of those companies that gets excited about changing technology...for what we do obviously if you look at the equipment we are currently using...the output and whatever limitations of those machines are just fine for our clients. Never have anyone come back and complain, but they do come back. Never have to outsource a job because we don't have the capacity or quality. We don't care about the latest shiniest anything, we care about service response time and uptime in general. And of course, competitive pricing...which our older 6180s really aren't anymore.

 

[kslight]

Service is going to vary area to area. I would be trying to find other printers who have similar machines to what you are looking for and ask them their honest opinion about the service they have been receiving from Ricoh or any of the other big guys. I know for us Xerox service has been fantastic and one of the reasons we have stuck with them as that is worth a lot to us.

Xerox used to be the way to go out here, but it seems they started tanking 5-ish years ago and really steeply fell off the last 2. Lots of technicians laid off, retired, been through several service managers, demo room/office closed, various sales people come and gone, our main sales person promoted to a position to where they cannot help us anymore, sales outsourced to what appears to be an incompetent third party, billing outsourced to Guatemala... General apathy by Xerox employees and customers alike, we are concerned that if we were to buy new Xerox equipment we would not get good service for years to come. But like I said, we have flat out told them since January we needed new equipment, and we can't get them to send us a proposal. We have requested to be moved back to Xerox directly for sales instead of the third party, and they have not budged. We are just not perceived as big enough business for them anymore. I was told that if you spend less than $250k a year (which we are just below the threshold of), you were automatically outsourced to the third party and cannot be moved back to Xerox direct. So our impression is they do not want to be in the running for our business anymore.

 

[kslight]

Hey ksherrod: Spent 10 years with series 2 Indigos. I've been running my Ricoh ProC9100 for almost a year now. With Indigo it was nearly impossible to get a tech to make the 4 1/2 hour drive to my site, spare parts were unheard of. The phone support was pretty good, and with almost no tech support I got to be pretty good at working on it, kind of the sink or swim kind of thing. This despite the huge monthly $$$$ for the service agreement. If, after much time with the tier 1 phone guys we figured I had to replace a circuit board, the soonest you could get it was 10:30 AM the next day. And here is the worst part. There was about a 50% chance the board they sent you would work, or maybe it would have some other defect.
Now Ricoh: In my area, which is not a very "urban" area. The tech service is fantastic! Been almost a year and it's still unbelievable to me how great it is. And talk about spare parts, I have at least 1 and in many cases 2 of the TCRU (trained customer replaceable units) on hand. I really can't imagine how my Ricoh customer service could be any better. At one point with Indigo I went a little over 2 years without a tech onsite. I think the longest I've gone without seeing my Ricoh tech is about 2 weeks. As I replace these TCRU parts, he stops by and rebuilds the ones I took out so I'm ready to go again.
But like others have mentioned, you should definitely research what the service is like in your specific area.

Ah yeah I am a little familiar with the Indigos and their service scenarios...not at my current employer but about 12 years ago.

The Ricoh dealer has been very loud about the TCRU for the proposed equipment. It seems like a mutually beneficial scenario. I have no problems doing part swaps and know that this would solve some of our downtime if the Xerox equipment was a little more practical in this regard. I do change some of the parts, and the CRU, of course, but the 6180s don't seem built for user maintenance and there are only a handful of parts (just drums, fusers, and consumables basically) that we are given to change on the J75s.

 

[Shawnd]

The TRCU is a a great program, my tech just popped in this morning to rebuild some of my parts then he is off again. We have a good amount of spares of everything onsite so if say a paper transfer unit gets lines on it we can swap it out quickly and be back up running in 5 minutes. The only time I really call in for support is when the machine throws up SC codes that I can't clear. Most of the time I will come in and the tech will already be here since the machine alerted him to issues overnight and he is already fixing the potential problem.

 

[jwheeler]

I was a graphics manager at a large mulitple location printing company in Santa Fe Springs (with approx 50 employees) and we were all Xerox for decades as well. When it came time to upgrade, the owner wanted me to look into other vendors. I reached out to Canon and Ricoh and was impressed by their gear. However, the owner kept hearing positive feedback from nearby printers who had made the switch to Konica Minolta, and were very happy so he asked me to contact them as well...I really didn't know much about KM to that point because the 2 other shops I had worked at had Xerox or Canon. KM's products performed well, quality was awesome, and the pricing was great, so we took a chance and made the switch. That was 6.5 years ago. I no longer work there but we were very happy with the switch. I still keep in contact with them and they told me they upgraded with KM to newer models and are still happy. And now...I work for Konica Minolta! I was confident enough in their products and service to come and sell their gear. I've been here 4.5 years later and we have replaced many Xerox's with positive results.

For your volumes, I'd recommend looking at two Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6136's (B/W) and a C6085 or C6100 for the color.

 

[kslight]

I was a graphics manager at a large mulitple location printing company in Santa Fe Springs (with approx 50 employees) and we were all Xerox for decades as well. When it came time to upgrade, the owner wanted me to look into other vendors. I reached out to Canon and Ricoh and was impressed by their gear. However, the owner kept hearing positive feedback from nearby printers who had made the switch to Konica Minolta, and were very happy so he asked me to contact them as well...I really didn't know much about KM to that point because the 2 other shops I had worked at had Xerox or Canon. KM's products performed well, quality was awesome, and the pricing was great, so we took a chance and made the switch. That was 6.5 years ago. I no longer work there but we were very happy with the switch. I still keep in contact with them and they told me they upgraded with KM to newer models and are still happy. And now...I work for Konica Minolta! I was confident enough in their products and service to come and sell their gear. I've been here 4.5 years later and we have replaced many Xerox's with positive results.

For your volumes, I'd recommend looking at two Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6136's (B/W) and a C6085 or C6100 for the color.

Thanks. I have some experience with KM, I worked at a couple shops where KM had come in and replaced walk-up Xerox 250's (ugh) and 6060s (double ugh) with Bizhubs (?). I remember that the printers themselves seemed as good or better than that level of Xerox (certainly more versatile at running heavy stock which old Xerox never seemed to do a good job with), though IIRC the Fiery controllers they used were either weak/buggy or not configured correctly, and service was not great. That was 14 years ago and in Minneapolis however so I wouldn't be afraid to look at them again.

 

[tpmar]

The TRCU is a a great program, my tech just popped in this morning to rebuild some of my parts then he is off again. We have a good amount of spares of everything onsite so if say a paper transfer unit gets lines on it we can swap it out quickly and be back up running in 5 minutes. The only time I really call in for support is when the machine throws up SC codes that I can't clear. Most of the time I will come in and the tech will already be here since the machine alerted him to issues overnight and he is already fixing the potential problem.

Same experience here Shawnd.

 

[tpmar]

The TRCU is a a great program, my tech just popped in this morning to rebuild some of my parts then he is off again. We have a good amount of spares of everything onsite so if say a paper transfer unit gets lines on it we can swap it out quickly and be back up running in 5 minutes. The only time I really call in for support is when the machine throws up SC codes that I can't clear. Most of the time I will come in and the tech will already be here since the machine alerted him to issues overnight and he is already fixing the potential problem.

In not quite a year of running my 9100, I would say the biggest issue has been SC codes about the inability of the press to communicate with the Fiery. Lost more than a few days trouble shooting this. By far the biggest issue I've had with this machine.

 

[msaeger]

In not quite a year of running my 9100, I would say the biggest issue has been SC codes about the inability of the press to communicate with the Fiery. Lost more than a few days trouble shooting this. By far the biggest issue I've had with this machine.

Does the Fiery shutdown with the printer when you hit the power button on the printer?

 

[tpmar]

Does the Fiery shutdown with the printer when you hit the power button on the printer?

Hey msaeger; yep, I've got them synced. The first time I had to replace the 2 communication cables, and the second time all software was dumped and reloaded.